


An Interview with Vanessa H. Gottlieb

by acedott



Series: Vanessa Gottlieb Appreciation [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: All pairings are in the background, Canon Character of Color, Character Study, Gen, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), im Black and i have a lot of feelings about Vanessa, rip to travis beacham but im different, this is purely self indulgent, this is really about Nessa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24552571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acedott/pseuds/acedott
Summary: Vanessa sits down for an interview with Writer Breakdown to talk about her life and her book.
Relationships: Hermann Gottlieb & Vanessa Gottlieb, Karla Gottlieb/Vanessa Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler & Vanessa Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Series: Vanessa Gottlieb Appreciation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774612
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	An Interview with Vanessa H. Gottlieb

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to my fic Cryptids and Kaiju.

Vanessa opened the door with a sunny smile. The light of the room backlit her tight coils of hair and warm brown skin. “Hi, you must be here from _Writer Breakdown_! I’m Vanessa Haile.”

“Sheri Nordemann." The interviewer shook her hand and smiled back. "Haile, not Gottlieb?”

“Technically, I’m still Vanessa Gottlieb for another few weeks until the paperwork is finalized,” she said, ushering Sheri into the room. “But I'm starting early. Besides, I never really felt like a Gottlieb.”

“Really?” Sheri asked, surprised. “You and Dr. Gottlieb were married for a little over ten years, you never felt like you were part of the family?”

Vanessa laughed. “Oh, sweetie. That was a lavender arrangement.”

Sheri’s eyebrows shot up. 

“We... _experimented_ , let’s say, which is how Isaak came into the world. Certain people thought that would be a horrendous scandal, like it was the fucking fifties, so we got hitched. But now that Hermann’s helped save the world twice, we figure we can do whatever we want.” She shrugged. “So we agreed to go our separate romantic ways officially and got divorced!”

Sheri blinked. “So now you’re dating his sister and writing a book with his partner? That doesn’t sound like going your separate ways.”

“Oh, we’re still friends! He’s been my best friend ever since we met in grad school, plus he’s Isaak’s father. I’m stuck with him. Besides, he’s been in love with Newt since before we met. I’m just glad he _finally_ did something about it.”

“Speaking of,” Sheri pulled out a handheld recorder. “Do you mind if I start recording our interview?” When Vanessa waved her consent, she continued. “We can tell from the book that you’re big into conspiracy theories. Have you heard the one about Dr. Geiszler’s role in the kaijus’ return?”

Vanessa’s eyes darkened momentarily, but she recovered quickly. “As much as I _love_ that theory, which is a lot, the truth is way less interesting. Newt and Hermann had this will-they-won’t-they thing going on the entire time they worked together, but neither one of them had the guts to do anything about it. Newt got the offer from Shao Industries after the war and told Hermann about it, hoping he would be all ‘No, Newton, don’t go, I love you.’ Unfortunately, Hermann is a catastrophizing drama queen - you can quote me on that, I’ve said it to his face enough times that he won’t care - and thought that he was standing in the way of Newton and his dreams of success.” She rolled her eyes. “So he left, they both pined, and apparently only a _second_ apocalypse was enough for them to admit how they felt about each other.”

“But what about the security camera footage from nearby buildings that puts Dr. Geiszler in the middle of the action?”

“You know, I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who _actually_ calls him by his title," Vanessa mused. "Anyway, yeah, of course he was up there, the man is obsessed with kaiju. A bunch came into his backyard and formed a fucking mega-kaiju. He wouldn’t have missed that shit for anything.”

“Then how did kaiju DNA make it into Shao tech?” she countered.

“Oh G-d, this is the dumbest part. So one of Newt’s interns was apparently a kaiju cultist and was experimenting with kaiju DNA to bring back our reptilian overlords or whatever. If his boss had been a normal person, that kid would’ve been fired from jump. But he played it off like he was just a fellow kaiju groupie with absolutely no evil intentions,” Vanessa made an exaggeratedly innocent face. “So Newt kept it under wraps. That much is on him, I’ll give you that, but he’s already faced a full PPDC tribunal for that and been fired from Shao Industries.”

“You sound really convinced of his innocence.”

“He’s a dumbass, but he’s not evil. He just has more doctorates than common sense.”

Sheri laughed. “Fair enough. I’ve never met him, but that lines up with everybody else’s impressions of him.”

“He’s a great collaborator though! I see why Hermann enjoys working with him, other than the obvious. The only real tension we had was whether or not to include kaiju in the book.”

“I noticed they aren’t in there.”

“Yeah, Newt won that argument. He pointed out that since we have empirical evidence of their existence they don’t count. We got into a huge discussion on what counted as empirical evidence; I argued that individual sightings of a named phenomena should count, he disagreed. He only won because he cheated and got Hermann to agree with him, the bitch.”

“You’ve mentioned that after writing this book, you decided to quit modeling. What prompted that?”

Vanessa reclined on the couch, kicking her feet up. “A lot of things. I’ve been really sick of the racism in the modeling industry for the longest time. Like, I keep getting calls for a ‘Gina Torres or Jasika Nicole’ type. Aside from the fact that those women look nothing like each other, I look nothing like either of them!” She gestured to herself indignantly.

Sheri nodded in commiseration. “I feel you. They always ask me to write the ‘urban’ and ‘trendy’ stories or speak to the ‘immigrant experience’, even though I’m exactly none of those things.”

“Ugh, that’s the worst. From now on, I’m only talking to this magazine if you’re my interviewer.”

Sheri blinked, surprised. “Oh, wow, you don’t have to do that.”

“No, for real! We’ve gotta look out for each other!”

“Well, I actually gave my two weeks notice a while ago. Once I write up our interview, I’m gone.”

“Good for you! I mean, it sucks for me, since who knows who they’ll send next time they want to interview me, but still.”

“You said there were other things that made you want to quit modeling?” Sheri prompted.

“Right. Yeah, racism aside, I just wasn’t feeling fulfilled anymore. I love that people felt represented seeing someone who looked like them, I know what it’s like to feel like you’re the only Black person in Germany, but I had to do what made _me_ happy.”

“That must have been a really tough decision.”

“It was. It felt like a really selfish decision at first. But I’m not leaving the modeling biz entirely. I’m opening up a modeling agency geared towards models of color. Not only to help them get more exposure, but also to teach them to advocate for themselves. I’m lucky that I’ve been taught to advocate for myself since I was little, but I saw a lot of models, especially Black models, not fight for themselves and suffer for it.”

“So, will you be writing books _and_ running a modeling agency? Or was this just a one-time project?”

“Probably both. I really love writing, and I’ve missed working on creative projects on my own terms. I’m thinking of writing a YA book next. Isaak has been my test audience for all my pitches.”

“Mother, writer, modeling mogul, is there anything you can’t do?” Sheri asked jokingly.

“Cook,” Vanessa responded immediately. “Anything more than cookies from premade dough gets either burnt or undercooked. I think I’m cursed.”

“That’s definitely the only explanation. Not impatience or anything like that.”

Vanessa jumped up from reclining, feet on the floor. Her hair bounced with her emphatic movements. “Exactly! That’s what I always tell Karla. But she’s a professional chef, so she doesn’t believe me.”

“How did you two meet, anyway? Everyone assumes that you were childhood friends, but you said you only met Dr. Gottlieb in grad school.”

Vanessa snorted. “Christ, can you imagine? Me in love with Karla but marrying Hermann while he’s in love with Newt? Oof, that would be _such_ a soap opera. Maybe I’ll say that’s the story when I write my memoirs. No, I met Karla through Hermann. I always thought she was cute, you know, she had this kinda repressed gay academic thing going on when we first met, which somehow runs in the family even though she's adopted, but I didn’t develop feelings for her until after Herm and I got hitched.”

“So, what, you just looked down the aisle at her as you were saying your vows, and you suddenly saw her in a whole new light?"

Vanessa groaned and put her face in her hands. “It was even more cliched than that, somehow. She was helping me make a cake for Isaak’s 5th birthday, insisting on making it from scratch like a pretentious person who can actually cook. She had this streak of flour on her cheek and I’d gotten egg in her hair somehow, and I just had this realization that I was completely in love with her. I don’t even know when it started, but that was when I knew. I didn’t get up the guts to tell her until after the attack on Tokyo.”

Sheri laughed. “You talked all shit about Dr. Gottlieb and Dr. Geiszler pining, but you did the same thing!”

“Hey! This is not the same thing at all!” Vanessa held up a hand in defense, though she was also laughing. “They _knew_ they were in love the whole time but still pined for over 20 years! I was oblivious and only pining for like 5 years.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That is completely different.” Sheri didn’t look sorry at all.

“Alright, ask your next question before I kick you out of my house.”

Sheri shuffled her notes, still chuckling slightly. "You were seeing Liwen Shao a few months before the attack on Tokyo. Was there any indication that something was wrong then?"

Vanessa's face clouded. "Honestly, that was really just me trying to get over Karla. I didn't think we would ever happen, so I was trying to move on. Liwen and I met at Tokyo's Fashion Week, and we hit it off. She's crazy smart _and_ she regularly takes paycuts to pay her employees a solid wage, which is super sexy. But she could tell pretty quickly that I was in love with someone else, so she ended things. We were only dating for like a month, but it never seemed like she had any idea what Newt's intern was doing. She really just wanted to stop people from dying."

"So you don't think she was involved with the kaiju return at all?"

"Why the third degree on that whole incident?" Vanessa asked testily. "No, Liwen and my brother-in-ex weren't involved at all. They just wanted to help."

Sheri paused. "Your...brother-in-ex?"

"Yeah." Vanessa brightened. "Hermann is my wife's brother, so he's my brother-in-law. Newt is the husband of my brother-in-law, which makes him _also_ my brother-in-law. I have two other brothers-in-law, but they're not relevant to this dynamic. And Hermann, my brother-in-law, is also my ex-husband. Ergo, Newt is my brother-in-ex."

"Wouldn't it make more sense for Dr. Gottlieb to be your brother-in-ex?" Sheri wondered. "Since he's your brother and your ex?"

Vanessa smirked. "True. But there are other implications to the term that make it apply more readily to Newt."

"Oh." Realization dawned on Sheri and her face reddened. "Oh! That - sure, yeah, makes sense. I'm just gonna move right along from that." She cleared her throat a few times to regain her composure. “Erm, in the introduction to the book, you mention feeling an affinity with cryptids ever since you were a kid. Anyone who’s seen your tattoo can tell,” she pointed to the Loch Ness Monster tattoo on Vanessa’s inner arm. “What makes you feel connected to cryptids so strongly?”

Vanessa smiled wryly. “I was a _habesha_ Jewish lesbian growing up in Leipzig in the 90’s. There weren’t a lot of people like me around. Thankfully my parents taught me to value myself, but I still felt like I was too different from everyone around me. Like, you can be _habesha_ , that’s fine. You can be Jewish, okay. And you can be a lesbian, that’s cool. But being all three at one time is pushing it.”

Sheri nodded. “Tell me about it. I grew up so far north we were practically in Denmark, so being a mixed Black girl was like being the town curiosity. I stuck out like a sore thumb in that tiny ass town, which is why I left as soon as I could.” 

Vanessa high-fived her. “Fuck that shit.”

Sheri’s phone rang. She looked at it and started gathering up her things. “Sorry, this is my boss. I’ve got to go. I hate to interview and dash, but-”

“No, don’t worry about it! I have to leave soon to pick up Isaak from school anyway. But it was really great to meet you.” Vanessa pulled her into a brief hug.

“Let me know when you publish your next book!” Sheri called as she made her way to the door.

“You’ll get the exclusive first interview,” Vanessa promised.

Outside, after making sure the door was shut, Sheri picked up the phone. “Marshal Mori. Yes, I just finished up with Ms. Haile.” She smiled. “You were right about her. She can be trusted.”


End file.
